Late Bar Thursday

So the following two incidents may be completely unrelated, but in my foggy mind this morning they made complete sense. . .
Yesterday (Thursday and Thanksgiving) I saw signs at several of the pubs/bars advertising "Late Bar Night Thursday". Which sounds nice and all. . .
Until 4AM when there was this eruption of polite knocking and door slamming on all of the doors in our hallway at the hotel. We even got a polite little knock on our door. Must have been some "late bar" confusion. So there I was, heart racing with someone knocking at our door (and many others) at 4AM. Could I go back to sleep? Of course not!!! Not with my erratic-at-best sleeping lately!!! So I waited out the late bar crowd and finally fell asleep--moments before the alarm went off.
I must admit, though, that Late Bar 4AM was much less disturbing than a wedding or something last Thursday/Friday at 1AM--wait a minute! perhaps this is evidence of more Late Bar activity! (We assumed it was the wedding hosted at the hotel). A man and what I thought to be screeching children were belting out something between a Gaelic version of "Waltzing Mathilda" and opera music at 1AM. I kept thinking: "Who keeps their kids up this late?" John later informed me that the man just had a really high singing voice--there were no children. Must have been my newly child-obsessed, overactive imagination!!!

So enough about the possible correlation between Late Bar Thursday and Early Friday AM shenanigans. .. looks like we will be a "go" to move into our house today. We are excited, although for some reason this excitement has brought on a tsunami-wave of nausea for me. Calm youself, little stomach!!!

We will probably be offline for who knows how long. . .everything is scheduled to take a long time but we have been blessed and lucky that things have been expedited in most cases. So who knows!!! I'll send out our new address once I figure that out and we have a phone, etc. I'm just thrilled to be leaving the hotel, convenient though it has been. It has been a nice transition, but I think we are both ready to some extent to be in a home.

Some final thought and ramblings before I have to start packing up our endless luggage and dirty clothes:

Thanksgiving in Ireland: We celebrated minus the turkey and fixings. Those of you who feasted, I hope you ate a little for us, too. We went to our favorite restaurant here and had some chicken wings (yes, again; and, yes, I know they are full of horrible things that are bad for my health but I just didn't care!!!), quesadillas, and these things called "Spanish fries" that were awesome. Basically, french fries with some cheese, olives, tomatoes sprinkled with oregano, paprika, and chili powder. Not half bad, if you ask me! But, let me tell you. . .I am so ready to not be eating out I can, well, taste it!

More Irish things we should adopt in the States:

* putting a pitcher of water on the table so you can get water as you need without having to wait for the waitperson to come fill it up. Not a high-tech or brilliant idea, but certainly useful!

* bringing your own bags to the grocery store: they charge you for them here, so everyone brings their own reusable bags to the grocery store. I used to do this beforeI met John and all the workers at the Signature Kroger would roll their eyes when they saw me coming with my cloth bags. I really liked bringing my own bags and not having tons of those annoying little bags all over the place. This is a good thing since I am now in "bring your own bag" land.

* trash-consciousness: Even the ATM machines remind you to dispose of your receipt properly (it actually discourages you from getting a receipt). There are campaigns for conserving energy on the television. You don't have a lot of waste with bags at the grocery. It's nice to be in a place that is truly making the effort to stay clean.

Okay, it is 10:15 AM now I need to get my caboose moving on all of the packing. John's meeting me at lunch to take care of lease-signing things, etc.
We miss everyone and will be in touch soon!!!!